“We believed at the time, and still do… that we may have had snake eggs,” it said in a Facebook post. “We couldn’t take the chance of them not being a harmless reptile.”

Fawna president Meredith Ryan told the BBC the eggs has been carefully relocated to a new site well away from people. When volunteers went to check on them, they found all but three had hatched and dispersed, so they were unable to identify the hatchlings.

Brown snakes are among the world’s most venomous, and kill more Australians each year than any other snake.